Hell’s Masquerade
by CrystalxxDreams
Summary: The rating will increase as the story continues, maybe getting to R. Season seven, based loosely on spoliers from season six. Takes off from the final scene in season six that the spoilers tell us about. Ultimately B/S. r
1. The Invitation

Title: Hell's Masquerade  
  
Summary: Season 7 based loosely on spoilers for Season 6. Takes off from the final scene that the spoilers tell us about. Ultimately B/S.  
  
Spoilers: Some of season 2, some of season 3, some of season 5, and lots of season 6. There's going to be more, too. If u don't like 'em, don't read this.  
  
Dedication: My dear muse who without this would not be possible.  
  
Disclaimer: ME, Joss, UPN, I don't. And that fact alone drives me insane.  
  
Feedback: ditz550@hotmail.com Review and I'll love u 4ever. Constructive criticism welcome.  
  
Here me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.  
  
-Joseph the Younger  
  
  
  
She sat on the couch facing a window but not looking out. The house was dark and she was all alone inside, her hands on her knees, her knees drawn to her chest but remaining a few inches away. Everything was cold, uncertain and still. The darkness seemed to surround her and eat her alive and to her there seemed to be an abyss where her heart was. All of her strength seemed gone, and with it her friends her life and even Dawn.  
  
Everything she had that was worth fighting for was gone.  
  
Everyone had changed so much, so much that they seemed like a complete other person in the bodies of her old friends.  
  
Willow was different, more grown up and distant since she fell into the dark arts and she was no longer, to Buffy, the best friend always at her side, edging her on and always supporting her. The Willow Buffy needed was dead and only existed in her faint memories.  
  
Xander was drawn in to himself too, and he was much more quiet and mellow then the old Xander she knew. True, he made an effort to still be his high school self, but he wasn't and no act that he put on could change that. The loss of Anya seemed hard on him and sometimes he felt that there was no reason to keep living. Drawn in and pain filled, there seemed such a sad story behind those big, brown eyes. He had become worse then the person he saw himself being on his wedding day in the glimpses of the 'future'. He was a completely different person but he had given up and that was just as bad.  
  
Names floated in her mind: Angel, Dawn, Spike, Oz, Cordelia, Tara, Anya, Joyce, Giles, Riley and even Jenny.  
  
She had lost some of them just this year and some of then ages ago, all through different ways. Some of them she hadn't cared as much about, some of them she would give anything to have back. They were names from the past, however recent and she thought that for every one if she had done one thing different they wouldn't have been gone; that she wouldn't be here right now. She dreamed up millions of ways to make them all stay, and she finally realized what Spike had meant when telling her ages ago—was that just a year—that every night he saved her.  
  
She had lost everything, everything worth having and there seemed to be no point of this anymore.  
  
She fought and she saved the world but she had lost everything. Somewhere she remembered reading something like:  
  
What is it worth to gain the whole world but to loose your own soul?  
  
She hadn't gained the whole world, but saved it and somehow, somewhere she had, metaphorically speaking, lost her own soul. All her love, all her friends, even all her hope, that was her soul and now it was gone.  
  
She was living in hell right now.  
  
'What is hell, but ones mind?'  
  
It was a quote, she believed.  
  
She had fought the external hell and had the weight of the world resting on her shoulders for six whole years. She had stood tall like a pillar of strength, not letting herself fall, not messing up, coming through however thinly every single time. Her friends had always been there for her and she had someone to come to: Angel, Giles, Riley and even Spike. There had always been a group off to the side cheering her on and she won the game, when all else failed, for her friends.  
  
When all her hope was gone when there seemed no other way then to surrender and let hell be on earth she always thought of her friends and how that would hurt them, and she pulled through for there sake alone. She wouldn't have cared if the whole world was damned otherwise.  
  
But now…  
  
Now there was nothing left for her to fight for, nothing left of her at all. Hope had left her, love had given up on her, and life had rejected her twice.  
  
She scarcely remembered Angeluses taunting voice.  
  
"Now that's everything, huh? No weapons… No friends… No hope… Take that away and what's left?"  
  
She remembered her gallant answer as she grabbed the blunt edges of the sword. Strong and powerful, filled with new determination.  
  
"Me."  
  
But this time around, when she was asking herself the same question. What was left of her after it all had been stripped away?  
  
She didn't seem to even exist anymore for she had done so much her never would have done and the circumstances didn't totally alter the causes.  
  
She was so unsure, so used up, and she felt like she had left all of her strength behind in heaven. So now she was in hell with out it.  
  
What was the point? Why was she living through this? Why did she have to go through this in the first place? She fought her way through forcing it all away through it and it wasn't worth it.  
  
She was fighting the good fight for a good cause, and the cause no longer seemed worth the battle.  
  
Everything she loved was gone, stripped away.  
  
What was the point of fighting anymore, or even less living?  
  
Suicide? No there was something she had never considered in her life. No matter what hell she was going through she just kept going with hope that good would always follow the bad. She had good times, but bad always seemed to be around the corner. She thought about it for a while, that this would make her finally free.  
  
Free of life.  
  
'Free of life? There's another word for that. Dead.'  
  
No, no, no! How did she think of that! How could she think of that! She didn't want to die.  
  
She didn't want to be the slayer anymore; she didn't care about the fate of the goddamn world. Half the people she saved from hell would just end up going to hell anyway. So she was saving half the world, maybe less, and postponing it for the others.  
  
Maybe once it was different; maybe at the beginning there was a reason to fight.  
  
Maybe.  
  
There wasn't anymore.  
  
Fighting was something stupid, something idiotic.  
  
Her futile mission, her kamikaze phase.  
  
She was only preventing the inevitable, and she was fighting for the loosing side. Maybe Faith had the right idea. Maybe it was easier to be bad. Maybe Spike was right and she did belong in the darkness. Maybe the first slayer meant more when she said 'Death is your gift.'  
  
Maybe…  
  
Buffy sighed and went upstairs into the darkness her mind and heart weighed heavily down with one question.  
  
What was the point of being good when evil is so much easier?  
  
She didn't know, but she had decided this much: she wasn't going to save the world again. Let the friggin' world save itself.  
  
~TBC~ 


	2. R.S.V.P.

So farewell hope, and with hope with hope farewell fear,  
  
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost  
  
Evil be thou my Good.  
  
-John Milton  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
  
  
Buffy was walking into her room when it happened. She was walking as though she was in a trance, walking slowly and surly to her seeming doom. Maybe it was, she wasn't sure about it; she wasn't sure about anything anymore. Her fate was uncertain but her mind was decided against one way and she couldn't go back to being a bystander.  
  
Ignorance is bliss.  
  
What happened was simple, yet unnatural, an illusion of the future of a path. She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. It was a quick glance, lasting not even five seconds but she saw it for long enough to tell it was real. It was her.  
  
She had the same face, but makeup that reminded her of Faith, deep, dark gothic colors. Her hair was died an ebony black, and her skin looked pale. She wore black leather, and she looked good.  
  
The image in the mirror looked as troubled as her, just as lost in it's own mind, and unlike her it's eyes showed an understanding of what was happening. It just looked at her, not smiling, not smirking, not shaking it's head. Blank, but a look she couldn't place, no tone of sympathy, not once of joy not one of sorrow. The puzzled understanding in its eyes was what she didn't get, what she couldn't comprehend. The face wasn't nostalgic, but it didn't appear happy either. It was her, it seemed, but in so many ways it wasn't. There was  
  
It seemed like a shadow, a distortion of her. Someone else with her body, but Buffy paid that no attention. What she saw in the mirror she liked, for she saw it as a way out a new life she could live.  
  
She could fight for the other side.  
  
Evil Buffy. Hmmm. Interesting.  
  
It wasn't that that allured her, though. It was the freedom, the lack of rules that came with evil, the way people didn't mind whatever bad sins you do. They have a problem with you doing what's hard, fighting the good fight, being a good person. How much easier evil is, the lack of restrictions it provided.  
  
Good had it's own rules. No giving in to human impulses, no doubting whatever you've been taught. Be nice to everyone, don't tell them they annoy you, and be fair, share. All the things people hated doing but did anyway to make others like them and to make them a good person.  
  
Screw it.  
  
Evil had no trust, no friendship, no love. Trust was something you couldn't have, because no one was worthy of it and you'd wind up dead. Friendship was replaced with alliances and enemies and love with lust. How much simpler the evil code of honor, if there was honor in evil, was then good.  
  
Free.  
  
There was no one you had to protect, no one you had to look out for other than yourself.  
  
All that mattered to you was you, and you alone. For the first time Buffy saw how different Spike was compared to evil. He cared for Dru; Dru was his world. He loved her, not lusted after her, he-  
  
SCREW this!  
  
I don't give a damn!  
  
Buffy stamped those thoughts out of her head. She was a little nervous, and a little remorseful that theses thoughts entered her mind, and that she was giving into them.  
  
No. I don't care.  
  
She chanted those words into her head and gathered all her will power to make those words true. I don't care. I don't care. She squeezed her eyes shut hard crumpling the sheet of her bed. All the strength in her body went to her hand and mind as she chanted, over and over in one frenzied circle willing them true making herself believe and accept them as true. Her thoughts were synchronized and controlled with all her power. I don't care.  
  
I don't care.  
  
I don't care.  
  
Then—snap—she didn't care.  
  
She left it all behind, human emotions:  
  
Love, trust, friendship.  
  
Remorse, hope, fear.  
  
She knew no one other then herself needed to survive and she was intent on keeping it that way. So why fight to save all those people? It only endangered her life, anyway. Bystanders got killed everyday, and she didn't wan to be bored like that. Evil seemed like the best way to go.  
  
Not just for the prospect of being evil; was anyone evil for that alone? No, she thought of evil as simply the winning side in this war and the best thing to do to survive was to fight no the winning side.  
  
Her thoughts collided and ran together, her hand still loosely on the bed sheet but her eyes open in a wide eyed wonderment like the first look a child has on Disney Land. There was something in them that hadn't been there before, though. It was one of the most striking differences between her and the image she saw in the mirror. It wasn't there at first, but now there it was. Hard rocks at the core an indifferent look that wasn't there before.  
  
Inside her mind was running at a million miles per hour, racing through thoughts as they hit, her head was a game of bumper cars, hitting and colliding and finally she was left wait a feeling of excitement and ecstasy, a feeling so free of the old feelings she had known but pure joy at the same time. She was free.  
  
And the main question—was this worth its price—never entered her head.  
  
  
  
~TBC~ 


End file.
